AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s “Syphilis Tsunami” outdoor advertising campaign references the world-renowned landscape print “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by Katsushika Hokusai to draw attention to dramatically rising rates of syphilis across the country. In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted an estimated 33% increase of infectious syphilis cases from 2014-2016. The national response needed to this growing public health crisis is made even more urgent by the fact that Pfizer, the manufacturer of Bicillin L-A, the preferred medication used to treat syphilis, has refused to meet the medical demand through constant drug shortages and multiple stockouts of the treatment over the past year, as widely reported by news organizations and health agencies.As a follow up to AHF’s groundbreaking “Syphilis Explosion” outdoor advertising campaign, the “Syphilis Tsunami” billboards will first appear in Los Angeles and will be complemented by a digital media campaign to draw attention to the national syphilis epidemic and to put pressure on Pfizer to supply Bicillin L-A in quantities that meets the growing demand for treatment.

(And the moral of the story is that if you are an artist and you don’t want people to do this to your stuff, then you should never die. That way, the 100-year waiting period (that I suppose is what applies in this case) won’t start and your art will never enter, how shall we say, the pubic domain.)

Now, add up all the San Francisco County land area amidst these points and you’ll get 46.something square miles. Sry.

Anyway, this is wrong:

So that’s your answer, 46 square miles. Oh, you want to round up to 47? OK. No but really you want to round up to 49, you know, for the poetry of it all?

Well, then why not round up to 50, or 100 square miles then?

Of course, back in the day, 49 square miles was a fair guess – 7×7 right? But the problem with that is geography. We were forgetting the Great San Francisco Bight, the part of SF’s northwestern corner that just aint there.

Well, no it’s not. Add together all the land of San Francisco County, even including all the landfill and the Farallones and Alcatraz and even including the slivers of islands we only have small parts of, like Angel Island and Red Rock Island and Alameda Island, all of it, is only just 46 point something square miles.

Don’t you people know that?

So 7×7 = 49, yeah sure, that’s a good start, but what about the Great San Francisco Bight? (Or bite, either way.) A big part of our Upper Left is missing, right?

So you’re the great cheerleaders for the City and County but you don’t even know what it looks like, right?

Is this pedantry what I’m committing? Well, you tell me, babe. Hey, let’s talk about the other Mayor who got appointed by Mayor Willie Brown – let’s hear something from Gavin Newsom:

Well leaving aside the facts that SF wasn’t founded in 1849 and it wasn’t founded by 49’ers (who actually lived far to the east of SF in 1849), and that some 49’ers settled in Santa Clara as well, leaving all that aside, we’re not a 49 square mile city, right? So that shouldn’t be a any part of a legal argument about where any NFL stadium should be, right? Until at least one of our Mayors gets things right, this pattern will continue. Right?

(And check the video – if that’s what he’s like post-“rehab,” what was he like before?)

Anyway, how about Get Your Kicks in the 46, you know, instead? I’m sure our NikeTown would like that one. Or, rounding up, you could go with Shopping Heaven in the 47?

Oh, and the other thing is that telling people to only shop in the county where they reside, which is more or less what we’re doing here, is a baaaaaad idea for a tourist town like Frisco.

Oh, and another thing is, gee, is this kind of feel-good thing effective? No, but you’re trying to throw struggling boutiques a bone? OK. But with stuff like this?

“Suggested posts:

Having breakfast/lunch/dinner @__________, my favorite place to #shopdine49

I’m making a difference by shopping and dining in the 49 this holiday season #shopdine49